ODD COURTSHIPS

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 126, 30 May 1935, Page 17

ODD COURTSHIPS

UNSUCCESSFUL LETTER

TWENTY-ONE AND THIRTEEN

COBBETT'S TREASURE

The celebrated George Whitefield began his courtship. in a • singular fashion. His biographer pronounces him one of the oddest wooers that ever wooed. When Whitefleld was ir» America, and had under his charge- the orphan house in Savannah, "it . was much impressed on his heart that he ought to marry in order to have a helpmate in his arduous work." He had also fixed his mind on the young lady whom he intended to ask to become his wife. So he addressed a letter to her parents, and enclosed another to herself. In his letter to the parents he stated that he wanted a wife to help him in the management of his increasing family,. and then said: "This letter comes like Abraham's servant to Rebekah's relations, to know whether your daughter, Miss E., is a proper person to engage in such an undertaking; and, if so,, whether you will be pleased to give me leave to propose marriage to her. You need not be afraid of.sending me,a refusal; for I bless God, if I know anything of my own heart, I am free from that foolish passion which the world calls love." He wrote in a similar strain to the young lady, asking her, among many other questions, if she could leave her home and trust in Him for support who feeds the young ravens; and bear the inclemencies of air, both as to heat and cold, in. a . foreign climate; whether, having a husband, she could be as though she had none. He also told her that he thought the passionate expressions which ordinary courtiers use ought to be avoided by those who could marry in the Loand that if she thought marriage we in" any way be prejudicial to her t... ■ ter part, she was to be so kind as si him a denial; that she need not i afraid to speak her mind, as he lo\n her only for God. The letters wer.-* not so successful as Abraham's servant The parents were , not very anxious to send their, daughter on such an adventure, and Whitefield continued for a longer space in his bachelor condition. Some time after he essayed another courtship with a'■ widow in Wales after the same style. The mode in which Rebekah was chosen for Isaac seems to have been Whitefield's ideal of obtaining a wife. The week after he was married, he went on one of his evangelistic tours, and left his newly-wedded wife to muse alone amid the Welsh hills, in the second quarter of their honeymoon. •THAT'S THE GIRL FOR ME." "When I first saw my "wife," says Cobbett, "she was thirteen years old, and I was within a month of twentyone. She was the daughter of a sergeant of artillery, and I was the ser-geant-major of a regiment of foot, both stationed in forts near the city of St. John, in the province of New Brunswick. I sat in the same roomj with her for about an hour, in. company with others, and I made up my mind that she was the very girl for me. That I thought her beautiful is certain, for that I had always said should be an indispensable qualification;. but I saw in her what I deemed marks of that sobriety of conduct which has been by far the greatest blessing of my life. It was now dead of. winter, and, of course, the snow several feet; deep on the-ground, and the .weather piercing cold. It was my habit,' when I had done my morning's writing, to go out at break o£ day "to. take a walk on a hill, at the foot of, which pur ; barracks lay. . In about three mornings after I had first seen her, I'had, by. an invitation to breakfast with me, got up two young men to join me in my walk; and. our road lay by the house of her father and mother. It was hardly light, but she was out on the snow, scrubbing out a washing-tub. That's the girl.for me!' said I, when we had got out of her hearing. ... . At the end of about six months my regiment, and I along with it, were removed to Frederickton, a- distance of a hundred miles up the river of St. John; and, which was worse,- the artillery was expected to go off to England a year or two before "pur regiment. The artillery went, and she along with them; andJiowit was that! acted a part becoming a real and sensible lover. I was aware that when she got to that gay place, Woolwich, the house-of her father and mother, necessarily visited by numerous persons not • the most select, might become unpleasant'to her, and I did not-like, besides, that she should continue to work hard. CURSED POOR BAWLING PITT. : "I had saved a hundred and fifty guineas, the .earnings of my early hours, in writing for ' the paymaster, the quartermaster, and others, in addition to the savings of my own pay. I sent her all my money.before she sailed, and wrote to her, to-beg of her, if she found, her home uncomfortable, -to hire^a lodging with- respectable people; and,'at any rate, not 'to-spare the money by any. means, but to buy herself good clothes, and to live without hard work, until I arrived in England. . . .. As'the malignity of the devil would have /it, we were kept abroad two years longer than our time, Mr. Pitt (England not being so tame then as now) having "[knocked up a dust with Spain "about" Nootka Sound. Oh, how I cursed Nootka Sound, and poor Bawling 'Pitt, too,: I am afraid! At the end of four years, howtester, home I came, landed at Portsmouth, and'got my discharge from the army, by the great kindness of poor Lord Edward Fitzgerald, who was then the major of my regiment. ~ I found my little girl a servant of all work (and hard work it .was), at five pounds a year,-in the house of a Captain Brisac; and, without- hardly saying a word about the matter, she v>ut into my hands the whole of my .hundred and fifty guineas unbroken! - Need. I tell the reader what my feelings were? . ... Admiration of her conduct and self-gratification on/ this indubitable proof of the soundness of my own judgment were now added to my love of her beautiful person."